FamilySearch for Kids
By Josie Morris
PROJECT BRIEF
Providing a heart turning experience for children turning 12 that leads to gathering families. We want to help children discover more about their ancestors and get them excited to begin gathering their families on both sides of the veil.
INITIAL APPROACH
Our initial approach to this project was to visit the activities that FamilySearch already has for families and children to see whether we could use these activities we already have to create our kid FamilySearch.
Our initial approach to this project was to visit the activities that FamilySearch already has for families and children to see whether we could use these activities we already have to create our kid FamilySearch.
PROJECT GOALS
Our goal for this project is to create a beginner mobile and desktop version of FamilySearch so that we can reach a broad audience of young beginners. We are aware that in many areas around the world, users only have access to mobile devices and as such, we are concentrating our efforts on creating a mobile version of the children's FamilySearch Experience. Our goal for this project is to introduce children at a younger age to what family history really is and to show them that it is a fun and fulfilling experience.
Our goal for this project is to create a beginner mobile and desktop version of FamilySearch so that we can reach a broad audience of young beginners. We are aware that in many areas around the world, users only have access to mobile devices and as such, we are concentrating our efforts on creating a mobile version of the children's FamilySearch Experience. Our goal for this project is to introduce children at a younger age to what family history really is and to show them that it is a fun and fulfilling experience.
TOPIC RESEARCH
Before we began this project, we researched how successful the current FamilySearch is with children and teenagers. A few coworkers traveled to Central and South America to user test children to see what their current experiences are with family history and how they use FamilySearch to do their families work. Findings show that although many families do activities that count as family history, they were unaware that it counted, and thought that family history was mostly for old people.
CHILDREN'S APPS & WEBSITES RESEARCH
In order to understand what apps and websites did to engage a younger audience, we decided to do some research of our own to find what appealed to kids and how we could get them excited about our new app. A few questions we were trying to answer included:
How did websites/apps that were geared for kids encourage action?
How did the visual elements they use help kids stay engaged?
What are the current trends for helping a site be visually appealing for kids?
What other themes existed across apps/games/websites for kids that we could leverage in our app?
RESEARCH FINDINGS
What we discovered from this research was that kids apps/games/websites have very similar themes and patterns such as:
The need for progress/badges/competition.
Personalization - the ability to customize their page as well as having age appropriate activities, respecting their level of mastery, not giving them too difficult/easy activities. Along with the personalization, the kids also wanted to have some way of personalizing what activities or games they wanted to complete, and how their interface looked.
Kids wanted short, simple instructions. If it wasn't short or simple, they were unlikely to read through it. They were often given one small task at a time, at least until they began to grow their skillset, and then they could have more difficult options and games.
Bright and playful colors. We noticed that sites for kids had a lot of color to them, and they often utilized "white space" but instead of making it white, they make it bright and appealing to the kids.
Big and attention grabbing: we also noticed that most of the interface was bigger for kids; text, buttons, icons, and images were all increased in size to help them decide what to do.
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH AND IDEATION
Next we dove into the children turning 11 CI to utilize the information that we already had gathered. On our CI, we created a section all about kids and what experiences they needed in order to be engaged. Here are some of our experience requirements for kids that we leveraged in this project:
Kids like to learn about themselves
Kids get excited when they get a chance to share about themselves, and when kids see another kid sharing something about themselves they want to share as well.
Kids like answering short and simples questions with short and simple answers, don't make it too difficult, make it something that they can understand and answer. They like being able to know the answer, so make it easy.
They get excited when there are blank spots that they get to fill in information. They are more likely to enter in information than they are to answer an open ended question.
Kids also like different ways to personalize their experience and like to have options
Kids like seeing themselves on the product they are using (either with a picture or through an avatar).
Kids learn by doing, moving, creating, playing, competing, singing, solving—don't just talk to them or explain what they have to do before it applies.
Kids like tangible reminders of things they've done.
We also went over other problems that children face that we could address in our hackathon. Some of the problems included: many 11 year olds didn't know they could get a recommend when they turn 12. Various 12 year olds never get the opportunity to go to the temple at age 12 because their family doesn't have the resources (confusion about the patron assistance fund and when they can use it). Kids are also nervous about going to the temple for the 1st time and we wanted to address this in our designs to help them become excited for their temple visits.
PERSONA, CONTENT, PRINCIPLES
Our next step was to create a persona for who we were designing for. We decided we would design for my brother in law Ulises Lopez. For this project we said he was turning 11 the next year, he lived on the border of TX and MX, and was a beginner with FH.
For each aspect of a child's family history experience (Me, My Family, and The temple) we created a table. On the left were ideas about content that would be interesting to kids based off our research and features that we could include. On the right was principles that we needed to keep in mind as we designed that section. This way as we moved to the next phase of prioritizing, deciding, then sketching the actual ideas we wanted to pursue we would know what design principles we needed to keep in mind for that area.
FINAL PRODUCT
Friday afternoon we divided out portions of the storyboard and each took a section to design. Every 50 min we took a break to share what we had done. This provided valuable feedback for us and also a time to ideate even more. It was during these 10 min breaks every hour that we were able to refine our ideas or switch directions if needed. This communication was key to making faster progress. It also helped us finalize our style, our layouts, and other design elements as each hour went by. Over the weekend Kevin cleaned up the designs and then Monday Curtis put the invision together.
